Where To Workout: Paisley Moss, Glasgow Airport

Paisley Moss is a (bizarre) workout location I first discovered whilst running a lap of Glasgow Airport (10 miles to/from my house) last May. After running through the smelly (it was a stifling sunny day) nature reserve, which I never knew existed either, I discovered a set of 'balance beams'. This is the same style of non-challenging assault course equipment that can be found at Barshaw Park.

As I couldn't see any other equipment at that stage of the path I was following, I was absolutely baffled, especially as these balance beams appeared to be on the outer airport grounds. As I carried on running I began to see what appeared to be a set of overhead rings.

At the time I couldn't believe my eyes - I had been looking for something like this for a few weeks, and this was just before I discovered the monkey bars at Barshaw.

On closer inspection, the rings were overrun with long grass and didn't look like they were being used all that  much. There was also a hilariously positioned Glasgow Airport sign stating, "PRIVATE PROPERTY - NO UNAUTHORISED ACCESS TO THIS LAND", right next to a purposefully built gap in the fence to allow people to access the rings from the footpath! I was very confused.

I had a bit of a play and managed to do a handful of chin-ups (remember this was right at the start of my calisthenics journey!) before carrying on with my run. I still couldn't believe what I'd found; I think it was the location of this equipment that baffled me the most. Wedged between the airport and the motorway, this initially appeared to be a hidden gem.

However, as I travelled further in to my calisthenics journey, I quickly realised that similar to the equipment at Barshaw, these rings were OK, but far from ideal. As you can see in the image above there is very little head height above the rings, which rules out muscle-ups, unless you have strong enough hand strength to use the thick bar between the rings (which I do not yet). The ground has been dug away beneath the rings, so anyone below 5"7/8 would be able to keep their feet off the floor without bending at the knee.

As I carried on with my run I found a desperately sorry looking inclined sit-up station which didn't look like it could have held my bodyweight, so I gave that a miss!

As I reached the end of the footpath I found what was the proper entrance to this 'fitness' course, with a sign explaining what was on offer. As the sign states, the footpath is actually a 300m "running track" and all the exercise stations combine to offer participants a "balanced cardio vascular workout".

Still stunned, I ran home and tried to Google more about this location but I never managed to find anything offering an insight in to the history and idea behind this random outdoor workout location. If anyone has any more information please don't hesitate to comment below!

Like any other outdoor workout I've found in the past eight months, there is potential here for an awesome facility, which would be used by many of the community. Sadly, it's quite limited and has a few design flaws which let it down, and probably explain why I've never seen anyone working out here.

Paisley Moss can be found on St. Andrew's Crescent, which you can access by car/bike/on foot by heading to the airport and following the road past Hertz vehicle hire. There is a good bit of parking available on the street next to a nursery.

The moss itself is quite an adventure and there is plenty of space for children and dogs to have a run around too. Just watch out for the midgies in warm weather!

Personally, I have started to visit this site on a Sunday to complete my hanging ab session, but more on that in the next blogpost...